Pych First Meetup
The Butterflies #
Though there were butterflies in my stomach half hour before the meetup started, about the attendance; they all vanished, as people started coming in for the meetup. Though I had kept the RSVP'ed folks reminded about the meetup constantly, I had my fingers crossed until people started turning up on that day.
The other thing about this first meetup was the choice of speakers had to come from the people I knew or those from the sponsors. Seemed a little autocratic to start with, but I was open to have anyone else interested to take a stand.
Welcome #
Then when all the folks who had RSVP'ed turned up, it was a real great feeling, as I was expecting only 30% to show up and not 90. This was the time to start. Ezhilarasan Babaraj(Ezhil), the founder and CTO of Qruize Technologies, who had shared his office premises to be used for the meetup started off by a welcome address. He noted that in a few meetups from now we should be planning for a hackathon, and should turn Pych to Pitching startup ideas. We would definitely have that in mind, Ezhil.
Before I would go on, I asked the attendees to come forward to introduce themselves, and what they do. There was definitely one surprise there, the coordinator of ChennaiPy also turned up for the meetup, this was good. Now, it was my turn to tell the folks assembled there why we came up with Pych, “It was purely the love for Chennai and love for Python”, this has been one driving factor to have a kickass python user group for Chennai. Though there might be teething issues, our idea is to keep people engaged and focused. There was an apology floated for being a little autocratic for this first meetup.
Mixing it all up with Python #
First up on the series of sessions was the Ageeleshwar from CSS Corp’s Innovation Labs. This was more theoretical, and a advanced python topic on the new gen classes of Python. Though there were many newbies in the audience, it should have definitely given them an insight on Python’s flexibility in defining Classes, and need to explore it to get things done.
Python Eats Shoots and Leaves #
It was time for Pandas to swagger in with Yogesh taking the stage. His insights into political criminology were to the fore, and the tool helping him to showcase that was Pandas. He used the power of iPython notebooks as well, which helped to easily keep track of his flow. This was a fascinating talk as it dwelled on the number of criminals that make the Indian political system. The the data is available here, but Pandas could give you interesting insights into it. And thats exactly what Yogesh showed.
Hot Samosas, Thunder and Lightning #
We broke out for tea, and snacks, and then the cloud broke out as well. It literally rained, cats and dogs, and we had to rush in for some cover. Though asbestos could save us from getting wet, the rain was drumming so hard on it that we could not have any conversation under it.
Rethinking DB with Python #
The explosion of NewSQL or NoSQL database should not be missed. There is a database for everyone, and Prabhu has his, RethinkDB. This presentation gave a insight into how to communicate, update and query a rethinkdb database. He also pitted it against other databases in the same league, like mongodb. You could see presentation on how it all went.
Merge or not to merge #
Time for an open slot. Since no one was coming forward, we asked Vijay, the coordinator of Chennai Py, to come forward and give his take on the Pych. Vijay was courteous as he articulated well the idea to merge the two user groups, and laid the emphasis in forming strong core team. His opinion is that Chennai does not need a forked user group, and it is only nice to have a focused team to make python user group of chennai even better, or rather kickass. We are with you Vijay, lets work together.
Python Coils Docker #
Next up was to get to the docks, of application automation and hosting. There is better sensation around than to use Docker. There is also neat python tool called Fig, it is to docker, what vagrant is for the Virtualbox. Demonstration setup a flask application one docker container and redis on the other, make the former communicate with redis, all this using YAML definition, fig.yml, the command “fig up”.
Winding Up #
Then it was time to windup, and Ezhil did the honours for that. He put forth a idea to get the next meetup to be a hackathon, to which we agreed with some raised eyebrows about how with such disparate audiences. But we need to get to that with some discussion. There would be some teething issues, but we need to get around those with some focus. One thing to say, everything of the first meetup was more than we expected.
Overall, for a frist meetup, it was a great meetup. This definitely is a good encouragement, we should do a better job the next time. We promise to give you an even better meetup next time up, all people thanks for coming.